ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Asian Dub Foundation's (ADF) symbolic resistance to late 1990s English neo-nationalism, its more pragmatic social resistance in the form of music education and political activism. It focuses briefly at the ADF's 2001 British Council sponsored tour of Brazil as an example of the fusion of the symbolic and social dimensions of political pop. The chapter expresses that all music is political, or at least all music is capable of being politicised. The overall optimism is underpinned by a gentle and joyful musical arrangement, propelled by bhangra rhythms and overlain with fluid electric guitar lines and popular and classic Indian music samples. 'New Way New Life' articulates an emergent Englishness that includes non-whites, 'Tjinder pon the radio/Dis is England's new voice', an Englishness based not on mythology, as is Brit-pop, but in the history of colonisation and migration.
